


Willing Hand

by boltplum



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Bonding, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Billy Hargrove Lives, Billy Hargrove Tries to Be a Better Person, Eventual Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Future Fic, Hurt Steve Harrington, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Insomnia, M/M, Protective Billy Hargrove, Sex Addiction, Slow Burn, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, more to be added as it goes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:48:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27704408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boltplum/pseuds/boltplum
Summary: Fifteen years after the summer of '85, Steve goes to California seeking Billy's help. He can't sleep.-It’s been a lot of years since Hawkins, since high school, since old hurts and old heartbreaks and monsters.It feels like yesterday, feels like this morning, feels like two seconds ago and Steve got the number from Max that afternoon and it’s taken him only as long as the ten minute drive home before he’s gotten through to the other line. To the person he wants.“I can’t sleep.” He breathes in. “She said you can help. Said—said you fix people like me. Can you help or not?”And maybe because it’s been a lot of years since a lot of old, terrible, wonderful things, but Steve’s definitely ruined mind maybe whispers back, “Can do, Harrington. Can’t say this isn’t a shock the size of Massachusetts, but I have an opening next—““No,” Steve says. “Now. Tonight.”
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 8
Kudos: 77





	Willing Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Californian Soil by London Grammar
> 
> Another WIP, I know.

It’s been a lot of years since Hawkins, since high school, since old hurts and old heartbreaks and monsters.

It feels like yesterday, feels like this morning, feels like two seconds ago and Steve got the number from Max that afternoon and it’s taken him only as long as the ten minute drive home before he’s gotten through to the other line. To the person he wants.

“I can’t sleep.” He breathes in. “She said you can help. Said—said you fix people like me. Can you help or not?”

And maybe because it’s been a lot of years since a lot of old, terrible, wonderful things, but Steve’s definitely ruined mind maybe whispers back, “Can do, Harrington. Can’t say this isn’t a shock the size of Massachusetts, but I have an opening next—“

“No,” Steve says. “Now. Tonight.”

The whisper is broken, warbling, maybe only a figment of his cruel imagination. But still it says, “It’ll cost you double—no. Triple. If we’re doing this, I want to take a bath in all that famous old Harrington money.”

Steve breathes out. Relief. Crushing like a wave that will sweep him out to sea. To drown.

To finally rest.

“I’ll catch the next flight out.”

The whisper grows louder, rounds out into something fuller, more real. Not a whisper now, not all in his head. Not some sort of fucked up fever dream.

The dream-not-a-dream voice splutters. Says, “Make sure it’s LAX you’re—”

Steve hangs up.

\--

Fifteen years ago, Steve could get a full night’s sleep. Fifteen years ago, he was nineteen and working in an ice cream parlor in a mall that rained monsters and served as the world for a sky of fireworks and valleys of black bleeding boys and girls. Skinned shins and chasmed hearts.

The girl lived. The boy died.

The girl lost her way for a while until she found it again. Until that old hellfire beast came back for a last time and took the first boy all over again.

The girl killed him before she brought him back and in the course of okay to end of the world not okay to holy shit we can revive the dead to only some of them and it ended with Steve watching Jonathan sob as he held his twice dead, twice come back brother in his arms. And Steve saw Max weep when the girl brought back another, angrier soul.

That boy left, came back, left again.

It’s been fifteen years. Fourteen years.

It’s been two wars and a lot of global worry. A lot of desert on the tv. It was talking Mike down from joining up. It was soothing Will when he freaked worse than Jane.

It’s been a few marriages, a few divorces, a few worse sorrows and greater joys. A lot of college. A lot of parties.

A lot of big, empty houses.

It’s been fifteen years. Fourteen years. Less and maybe more. More, always more.

Fucked up fever dream.

Fifteen years it’s been, for sure, no doubt. For him. For Billy it’s been fourteen, it’s been, it’s been, it’s been—

Billy’s been in California for most of them. Sometimes it feels like an unreality, an unmaking, an unhappening whenever Max talks about her not-quite-estranged older brother. She calls him her brother now too. Has done for over a decade.

Where is he in California, Steve likes to ask occasionally. To check in.

Don’t know. Maybe San Francisco now. Last month he was hanging in Humboldt, she’ll answer.

So it goes. So they live.

So he sleeps and doesn’t sleep. Not well, not for a long time.

It hits Steve all at once like a nuclear bomb. Bad dreams like zombies clawing at his brain every time he lays his head on his pillow.

Nothing helps, in the long run.

Nothing good anyway.

\--

He’s already packed. One bag. More of a small duffel than real luggage. He’s been packed since he got home. He’d been throwing socks and underwear inside before he’d even dialed Billy’s number.

Steve is thirty-four and maybe it’s a little pathetic that he still calls Nancy on autopilot. Nancy with her newborn (after two unsuccessful attempts) and a husband who works too much for that big shot photography gig at the paper in Indy.

“Are you sure about doing this,” she asks, even though it’s not really a question at this point. She knows as much as he does he already decided before calling. “He was terrible to you in school. Just awful.”

“Yeah.”

A cry starts up and Nancy sighs. “Hold on.” After a few minutes of the same, the cries lower to a distressed cooing. “Josie’s been having a tough time too. With sleeping.”

“Ever try that gin trick? On the gums?”

He can hear the roll of her eyes in the scoff she gives him. “Ha ha. So he got his own business out there? Really? With how he was I was sure he’d end up in some gutter. Before everything, obviously.”

“That’s what Max said. Went to school and got himself a degree or something. He kind of specializes in, uh. Special cases.”

More cooing. Some loving response from a first time mother. Steve knows she misses her job as a journalist more than she loves being a mom. Knows she’s not supposed to think that way.

“I guess it makes sense. He gets it,” she says.

Gets it. Died and came back. Has lived with an ugly secret for about half his life like all the rest of them.

“Yeah,” Steve mutters. He zips up the duffel and shoulders it. Turns off the light in the foyer. “He does.”

They talk for a little longer. Nancy hangs up. Steve locks the door behind him and says goodbye to the cold and empty house he’s lived in since he was born.

He won’t be coming back.

\--

The thing is Steve hates flying almost more than anything else. The top spot goes to gooey monsters. Or maybe that’s second tier now, after falling asleep.

The thing is, Steve spent most of his childhood on planes. To Italy. To Cuba. To Florida. To New York. To Thailand. To New Mexico. To Spain and France and England. To to to—

The rumbling jump start of takeoff freaks him out. Makes him feel he’s got a rocket taped to his ass. The hours long glide to wherever planes go just allows the feeling to ruminate. Saturate his thoughts, a fearful marinade. Until it comes time for landing, which Steve knew at five years old was how most planes really go. A botched landing, an unplanned skid, flip, tumble, no breaks kind of death.

So Steve hates flying.

Hasn't been on a plane since he told his parents no more at fifteen years old.

He orders drinks until he hits the cap. Stuffs his face with peanuts after that. He feels groggy (not unusual) and he feels sick to his stomach (also not strange) but he keeps eating until he feels like he’ll puke.

They land and he breathes that weirdly silent, breezeless evening air of California when he joins the line of waiting souls outside of the airport. Out and through the crowd of clapping onlookers as fatigues step off the red eye flight he tried to drown out with snacks and alcohol. Outside people drive and park and pick up and kiss and cry and laugh and say goodbye and—

And he already called Billy.

Steve lets the chill descend over him. He lets his knuckles ache around the strap of the duffel for almost an hour before Billy drives up.

It’s not the Camaro. Steve isn’t sure why he thought it would be.

It’s a big red truck. It stands out in the sea of Hondas and Toyotas.

Billy leans over the seat and gets the door open as Steve steps up. He looks like Billy. Not like the monster bleeding boy from fifteen-fourteen-fifteen-for-sure years ago.

There’s pleasant lines around his eyes, his mouth. His forehead. He’s got scruff. His hair is still the same ungainly mullet it was before he rose from the grave. Shaved bald, and so angry.

He’s grinning now. Like a beam of strong sun on a hot day, in this cold night Billy is scalding him where he stands.

“Harrington!”

Steve smiles, feels it go lopsided. Billy smacks the empty leather seat beside him.

“Hop in, asshole. We’re grabbing coffee.” When Steve is in and sitting but frozen mid-buckle, Billy elaborates with a shrug. “What? You flew out here to get your shit straightened out, what’s one more cup of coffee gonna do? What is it anyway, one in the morning? We'll need fuel.”

Steve buckles himself in. The truck shifts when Billy shifts into drive like he’s telling a horse to giddy-up.

Fuel for what, he doesn't know. His head is a throb. He won't argue against caffeine. “Guess you’re right.”

Billy grunts an affirmation. “So, how’ve you been?”

While they inch forward in traffic, Steve watches a soldier embrace her kids by the entrance. No husband in sight.

“Shitty.”

Billy laughs.

“You and the whole world, pretty boy.”


End file.
